Secretive House oversight body to open doors

The Liberal government will move this fall to open up Parliament’s secretive and powerful Board of Internal Economy.

“We’re going to have legislation, hopefully in the fall, to do that,” Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc told iPolitics.

However, LeBlanc is keeping the details of what exactly he plans to propose very close to his chest.

“If I talk about potential legislation before it is introduced then we’ll have a very irate question of privilege from the opposition that I’m talking about a bill before it’s introduced.”

“Read my mandate letter. It’s all in there.”

LeBlanc’s mandate letter included instructions to open up the Board of Internal Economy, which sets rules for the Parliamentary precinct and oversees $463 million a year in spending and operations – including the budgets allocated to every Member of Parliament.

“End the secrecy surrounding the Board of Internal Economy by making meetings of the Board open by default,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote in LeBlanc’s mandate letter.

The board, which is chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons, meets behind closed doors. Minutes of the board’s meetings are often only made public months after the meeting and the descriptions of the discussions are so minimal and so opaque it is often very difficult to get much of an idea what had been discussed.

Testifying before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee recently, Speaker Geoff Regan said the members of the board are bound by law to keep the deliberations secret.

“Under the Parliament of Canada Act and the oath that is taken by members, the members aren’t able to discuss the topics raised at those meetings.”

In recent years, however, the usually discreet board has found itself in the spotlight, such as when the Conservative majority on the board, aided by the Liberals, voted to order 68 NDP MPs to pay back a total $2.7 million of their MPs budgets that were used for staff in satellite offices. The NDP is challenging the ruling in Federal Court.

NDP House Leader Peter Julian, who is among the seven members of the board, questioned why the Liberals have made no attempt to open the doors to the Board of Internal Economy – despite the fact it was one of their campaign promises.

“There was bunch of commitments made during the election campaign and we have seen no sign of it yet but we believe strongly that the Board of Internal Economy needs to be transparent – not just on current decisions, on past decisions. We will welcome the government’s move but they have already been in office for six months and we’ve seen no sign.”

Moreover, Julian says the board has been operating the same way under the Liberals as it did under the previous Conservative government.

“I haven’t seen any change at all, having been on the past board and the current board, I haven’t seen any change at all in how it functions.”

Julian would prefer to see the board completely replaced by a separate, non-partisan group that would oversee MPs expense spending.

“I think that’s where most Canadians are – they want to see independent, non-partisan oversight of expenses because that’s what they expect of this Parliament. I think that’s why the Liberals made the commitment.”

Opposition Whip Gordon Brown, who also sits on the board, said he supports greater transparency but suggested there may be some limits in how much the public can know about some of the Board of Internal Economy’s discussions.

“It’s the government’s decision when they are going to move it but I guess some of the things that go on in the Board of Internal Economy are things that might not necessarily be things that will be public because they are concerning individuals or contracts – some things that might not necessarily be public information.”

“I don’t know how they are going to deal with that. We’ll have to wait and see what the government proposes.”